"Let's move a little back where it's not so crowded," my wife suggests, as the fourth doe-eyed Aussie minx in a row starts making goo-goo eyes at me and Isaac (three years old, and wearing Snoopy earmuffs) as we whirl and jig around in the deepening twilight to the sharp revivalist Memphis soul of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. "Isaac is getting tired."

Are you sure? OK then.

The problem with holding a music festival down Victoria's Great Ocean Road (situated somewhere to the south of Melbourne) is that you want to stick around and view the scenery (the 12 Apostles, the creeks, the eucalyptus trees, the retina-razing sunsets bursting into view round every corner of the treacherous, curvaceous road) rather than (say) watching the Kooks doing their crazy Kooks thing for the thousandth time.

It's not the fault of the Falls Festival – now in its 16th year, with headliners Franz Ferdinand counting in the new year tomorrow. And we're cool with it, too. Indeed, we're rather chuffed to be stuck in a two-hour tailback trying to pass through Lorne. It sure beats inching your way forward along the M25: a koala bear spotted here, a hooting boy racer there. When we finally make it here on the Tuesday (through blazing sun and blustery rain alternately), there's plenty to keep our eyes off the greenery: the twee-as-handmade-doilies SoKo, whose scarily full-frontal revenge song I'll Kill Her completely rocks the tent; or Swedish dance siren Lykke Li. The latter sounds entirely fractured on record: an alienated, too-smart indie kid on the wrong end of too many wrong relationships, caught alone in a storm at the disco: dislocated dance for the post-mash-up generation. Live, she's way stunning, more Abba than the Concretes (and with no disrespect meant to either), shimmying and sashaying her way to a backdrop of "Lykke Li: Marry Me" banners, with a hint of African tribal laced in between the beats.

On the main stage, Oz rock icons the Drones rip up the rulebook that decades of mealy-mouthed compatriots appear to have copied religiously: that to succeed back here, you have to sound American or British. Instead, their wired, off-kilter rock draws on a righteous heritage that includes homeboys such as the Saints, the Scientists (particularly singer Kim Salmon's solo work) and the Triffids – something about the pull and wrench of the guitars, the feral howl of Gareth Liddiard's anguished vocals that don't for a moment attempt to hide their roots. Recent single The Minotaur swaggers insolently, the way a green-crested cockatoo does. Their set is a revelation: a fully fledged, feral, fluid rock band to place alongside any you care to name.

We leave during the aforementioned Sharon Jones set (Isaac really is tired) just as the former prison warder grabs some female fans up on stage to help her strut like Tina Turner (only more so), passing signs warning us to "rug up", as temperatures drop below 7C at night. But you know what? We don't even care to be missing Ms Jones's tempestuous live show. Not when we have the Great Ocean Road at twilight to look forward to.